Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL): “No American Should Ever Buy One Product Ever Made From Communist China”

Florida Senator Rick Scott talked with Fox News Radio’s Guy Benson about the recent report that, Chinese President Xi Jingping pressured the director of the World Health Organization(W.H.O) in January to hold off on issuing a global warning about the coronavirus outbreak. Senator Scott set the record straight saying “China Lied, The W.H.O Helped Them, Thousands Of People Died, Those Are The Facts.” Senator Scott also called for Americans to stop buying Chinese made products and buy American products, “No American Should Ever Buy One Product Ever Made From Communist China. They Are Not Our Friend. They’re Not A Competitor. They’re Clearly An Adversary.” When asked again if Americans should ever buy any product made in China Scott doubled down saying,

“Never. We should stop. We should buy American products. It’s going to help American jobs. But we need to understand what communist China is. It is run by the Communist Party. They act in the best interest, the Communist Party. They steal our jobs. They steal our technology. They take they put people in prison for the religion.”

Listen To The Full Interview Below:

Full Transcript
Guy Benson: The Guy, Benson Show, we continue live on the Guy Benson Show, we are monitoring this event at the White House Rose Garden on testing and any major news that might come out of that, we will bring it to you. In the meantime, we are pleased to welcome back to the show. U.S. Senator Rick Scott, a Republican of Florida, who joins me now. Senator, good to have you back.

Sen. Scott: Hi, guy. How you doing?

Guy Benson: Hanging in there. So I want to get your reaction to a couple stories involving intelligence and in connection to China and Corona virus, including a New York Times story out within the last 24 hours that the U.S. intelligence community, the FBI, DHS and other officials are saying that we have evidence that the Chinese government is activating their spies and their hackers to try to steal not just American, but around the world, research and development on vaccines or treatments for coronavirus. And I just think sort of amazing that they played such a role in unleashing this on the world by lying and covering it up. And now we know that they are infamous for their. And just, you know, notorious for their intellectual property theft. Now they’re applying that to vaccines and treatments. Your response to those reports, Senator?

Sen. Scott: Well, what would you expect? Communist China. It’s run by the Communist Party of China. They do all this all the time. Everything they do is for the benefit of the Communist Party of China. And nobody else. And if they if they get the vaccine first, it’s not good for the country or for the world, because you know what? They’re not going to share. I mean, they’re going to take care of one group of people. The Communist Party of communist China. So I know. So whether whether an intelligence agency put that information out as possible, would I believe that that’s what they’re doing every day? Yes. Because they steal our jobs. They still are technology. They didn’t they weren’t transparent. They’ve infiltrated things like the W.H.O. to make sure they’re not a World Health Organization. They’re here. How do I take care of China organization? So, yeah. Do I believe it? Absolutely.

Guy Benson: You mentioned the W.H.O.. That’s actually my next question. This is an explosive report out of Der Spiegel, the German newspaper reporting on findings of German intelligence, the BND, all those, quote, Chinese President Xi Jingping pressured the director of the World Health Organization in January to hold off on issuing a global warning about the coronavirus outbreak. According to a German newspaper, the January 21st conversation between Chairman Xi and the W.H.O. leader Tedros was reported in Der Spiegel. Based on intelligence developed by Germany’s federal intelligence service known as BND, the report published over the weekend said she urged the W.H.O. chief to delay a global warming about warning with an end about the pandemic and to hold back information on human to human transmission of the virus. This is a very serious allegation from German intelligence and it goes to the credibility of the W.H.O.. I know that President Trump has gotten some heat for pausing U.S. financial contributions to that organization. But my goodness, Senator, if the Germans have it right and the W.H.O. was actively colluding with the Chinese government to cover this up and to not bring a crucial medical fact to the world, that’s scandalous.

Sen. Scott: China Lied the WHO help them. Thousands of people died. Those are the facts. So the WHO is basically they parroted whatever communist China information they wanted out there. So I’m on Homeland Security Committee in the Senate. I am leading the investigation of the W.H.O.. We’re going to find out what are the facts. Did they have a pandemic plan? If they had it, which I can’t imagine they didn’t. Did they follow it? When did they find information? When did they find out information? And did they tell us? So it it sure appears is that the WHO is just a propaganda arm for the Communist Party. And Communist China knew all these things. And intensely, we, you know, basically put this thing out in the world, whether it was intentional that they that it came out of a lab or came out of a wet market. Well, we do know is they lied. They covered up. And guess what? People have died all over the world and they killed the economy all over the world. So no American should ever buy one product ever made from communist China. They are not our friend. They’re not a competitor. They’re clearly an adversary.

Guy Benson: I would just add that from this story about the German intelligence, their organization, the BND, estimated that China’s action to conceal information that we just talked about resulted in the loss of four to six weeks in the fight against Cauvin, 19 month to a month and a half. That’s very valuable time. Senator, let me just follow up what you just said, though, before we move on to other topics. You think that no Americans should ever buy any product made in China.

Sen. Scott: Never. We should stop. We should buy American products. It’s going to help American jobs. But we need to understand what communist China is. It is run by the Communist Party. They act in the best interest, the Communist Party. They steal our jobs. They steal our technology. They take they put people in prison for the religion. They try to take away basic rights of the Hong Kong citizens. They lied to President Obama so they wouldn’t militarizes the South China Sea. They did. And now they clearly have lied about this. And think about the devastation moved by and death and in their economy. Don’t buy from them. They’re not. The Communist Party is not full of good people. They’re not. They lie to us. They know they’re out, too. They’re out to control us. That’s what that’s what they’re whole. They want to dominate the world. They’re not a competitor. I’m great. I was in business. I’m a business guy, loved to compete. These guys are out to lie, cheat and steal to win.

Guy Benson: Senator Rick Scott, my guest, Republican of Florida. Let’s talk about an issue that you’ve now written about. I know that you’re thinking about it a lot. We’ve had a number of your Senate colleagues on the show over the last two weeks about the issue of assistance to state and local governments in terms of what they’re getting hammered on, wooden with coronavirus and lack of tax revenues coming in and the concerns about having to lay off first responders and that sort of thing. There’s already a debate shaping up about how much money the federal government should give to state governments and localities and cities. And my concern that I’ve expressed repeatedly is I’m fine with giving some help where it’s needed because of the pandemic crisis. But I’m worried that states are going to take advantage of this moment to try to paper over some of their own fiscal failures, dating back far beyond Corona virus and fill some budget gaps that they’re responsible for. And that could come at the expense. And thanks to the largesse of taxpayers in states that are run properly and run. Well, what’s your approach when it comes to this type of legislation and what that aid should look like?

Sen. Scott: OK. I completely agree with with what you just said. Look, let’s help the states with regard to Corona’s coronavirus related expenses. We’ve done that. We put up $150 billion. If you have if a state has the expense, but with was to coronavirus, we’re going to cover 100 percent of it. By the way, by hurricanes, when I was governor, for of sort of them, it didn’t cover all my cost and Pershore didn’t reimburse me for lost revenues. We’ve already given the states 30 billion dollars for K-12 and higher education. Their costs should be down. We’ve given give them 50 billion dollars for Medicaid. Their costs should be down. We give them 25 dollars for public transit. Would the president just announce he’s giving them eleven billion dollars for testing? The Federal Reserve has a five hundred billion dollar lending program. Their hospitals have gotten a total of one hundred and seventy five billion dollars. Where does this stop? There was no free money. It is somebody’s money. We’ve got to get a return on those dollars. We can’t just give out money to everybody. We want to we’ve got to act responsibly. And we’ve helped our states

Guy Benson: Where does it stop? So I’ll put the question back to you. Where should it stop?

Sen. Scott: It should stop now. Look, I have zero interest in bailing out New York. I’m gonna give you the numbers for New York for a second. I got elected as governor of Florida. When Cuomo got elected, the governor did his budget. Does he control his budget? No. Did he borrow more money? Yes. If he offset my budget with two to three million more people is almost half of his budget. And he kept borrowing money. I paid off a third of the state debt. He kept raising taxes. I cut taxes and fees a hundred times. He did it. You know, he he does. We’re going to get if we do this, we’re just going to bail out their bad decisions. Look at Illinois with their pension plan is under 40 percent funded. I think it is California, New Jersey. And they want us to bail them out when they don’t want to watch their dollars. This is this is Rahm Emanuel. Don’t let a crisis go to waste. Grab every dime you can. That’s exactly what’s going on here.

Guy Benson: And you think that it is possible to write the legislation in such a way that previous budget woes don’t get bailed out, but coronavirus issues are addressed.

Sen. Scott: We’ve looked that’s what we’ve done. We’ve said the existing bill, the CARES Act says we are not covering lost revenue. Okay. You’re not. Look, we weren’t doing well when I had a hurricane and my tourism numbers were down. Did the federal government come and say, oh, I heard your tourism numbers are down, so your sales tax revenues are down? We’re gonna give you some money. No, they didn’t do that and they shouldn’t. That’s my responsibility to run. My state will have a rainy day fund watch, you know, control your cost. So is it the easiest thing to do as a governor? No. The easiest thing to say? Oh, yeah. You want something? I’m going to give money to everything. By the way, let me give you the numbers on your thought. Is in the top 10 states for K-12 education. You don’t spend what New York spends. Number one, in higher education, to U.S. News and World Report.

Guy Benson: We’re up on a heartbreak side. Gotta stop there for this moment. But we look forward to having you back. Rick Scott, Senator from Florida on the Guy Benson Show.